


run at least twice as fast

by rainbowfantasy



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Cloud Strife is smol and salty, Crack Treated Seriously, Developing Friendships, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Genesis Rhapsodos Does What Genesis Rhapsodos Wants, Mentorship, Post-Dirge of Cerberus (Compilation of FFVII), Pre-Crisis Core (Compilation of FFVII), Team as Family, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28519695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowfantasy/pseuds/rainbowfantasy
Summary: If you had the chance to change your fate, would you?The time travel fix-it in which Genesis is not even slightly a Disney Princess despite his current hair situation, doesn't know what he's doing no matter what he tries to tell you and honestly, someone else should have been tasked with this delicate situation because the only thing he can remember about Gaia's (future?) saviour is that he has hair that defies the laws of physics and he's not chatty. Admittedly, that last one could have been the mako coma, but who can say for sure?
Comments: 18
Kudos: 77





	run at least twice as fast

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.
> 
> _‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’_

It was a memorial to the wrong person.

Perhaps that was unkind but given the state of his withered husk of a conscience, unkind was a step up in terms of his own morality. It certainly wasn't that Zack Fair didn't deserve a memorial. Zack had in actual fact been extraordinarily kind, in what Genesis had considered would be his end. It just simply did not work to try to substitute one part of a person within another for these sorts of things. If anyone else knew this, it was he.

Three friends go into battle, one is captured, one flies away, the one that is left, becomes a hero. But he was no hero, the hero of the story had turned out to be Zack Fair's little trooper and even then, the Planet lay in shambles. Midgar was a skeletal ruin. Even if he had offered what remained of his own tattered soul as a silent sacrifice to the Goddess to wield as she saw fit, there was very little he could do for this world. This was not his life anymore, for he had chosen to become the monster instead of the hero. Angeal had chosen death over losing his humanity. Sephiroth, well. When it came to becoming a monster, he absolutely had to just take it one step further and go above and beyond. Even when it came to having a murderous mental break down, he did it better. He couldn't just let him have this one thing, the show off.

Selfish, that was the only word for it.

Truthfully, Genesis did not understand this new world enough to know why he was awake within it. Yet awake he was. There was a danger to it, it sang through his veins and told him that he was meant to be here. Perhaps not here specifically, but the remains of Midgar was as safe a place as was possible for lost soldiers trying to regain their bearings. The church was one of the few buildings left standing after the Planets third battle for survival in as many years. It had to be significant that this is where the hands of fate had led him, only to find the sword of his oldest friend offered up on an altar in memorial. 

There were worse places for a wary soul to rest than here. It was still unclear if Angeal had entered the lifestream, but if he had to remain outside of it, at least it was beautiful in it's own decaying way. Genesis knew he could not pass onto the next phase of existence, that he had instead been emphatically pushed away from it: a punishment for giving in to the monster within but also the promise of opportunity to one day come to rest with the Goddess if he could pull himself together and do whatever it was she had in mind for him. He had also gathered that Sephiroth could not permanently enter either from the way he apparently kept popping back up like a particularly persistent telemarketer. It was difficult to guess at whether it was more similar or less to his own experiences, but since he doubted either of them were about to have a little sit down and have a frank discussion of death experiences and losing ones mind, he could only guess based on rumour. 

That Sephiroth seemed to form a new body rather than healing the old one indicated a difference, as Genesis was relatively sure this was the same body he'd always had but altered somewhere on some deeper level. Magic beyond even as skilled a caster as he, primal and ancient. The temptation would be to call it stablised, but while Sephiroth did not degrade, he was not the poster boy for stable either. Not really the poster boy for anything at all these days. Those were Rufus Shinra (may Goddess have mercy on them for Shinra's continued existence in this new world), an executive who was a little too close to moogles for anyone's comfort and a trooper with gravity defying hair.

Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul. Pride is lost. Wings stripped away, the end is nigh. 

None of these things were true for him though, even if it had looked as if they might be for a time. His soul may be shattered, but he dreamed of yesterday, not the morrow. He dreamed of loss, not of wings for his own wing was still very much attached to him. Of what was and what could have been. It was utter self indulgence, but there was no one left who's opinion truly mattered so there were worse things still than self indulgence. The end had certainly seemed nigh more than once in the last ten years, but at the last moment, the planet tried to heal because there was something worth salvaging. It was almost enough to make him hopeful.

And on and on their merry-go-round went, until an appropriate sacrifice could be found. His own had not been enough to stem the tides of destruction but what was new there? It seemed to be his lot in life to be found wanting.

At least there were flowers. Angeal would have liked that. 

“You're very late,” came a voice from behind him, causing Genesis to spin on his heel to find a girl looking at him from the other side of the flower bed. “I thought you might not come at all.”

There was something not quite right about her, almost as if she were a liminal space where a person ought to be but was instead only a trick of the light.

“I was not aware we had a prior engagement,” Genesis felt his muscles tighten, ready to fight, run, do something other than stare at a girl that wasn't there.

“Maybe that was last time round,” the girl said, snapping her fingers with enough vehemence that the noise could have fooled someone into thinking she was actually there. “No, last time was Zack and he tried to save everyone. If there was a way to do that, I think someone would have found it by now. Some things have to happen.”

“Is this something that has to happen?” A few steps closer and Genesis could feel it, like the air before a thunderstorm or materia about to spurt out a powerful summon.

“I didn't say I had all the answers,” With that, the girl hiked up her dress and leaned down to the flowers. “I'm glad the flowers still grow here. I think your friend would have liked them.”

It was unsettling, which on the scale of how unsettling the entire interaction had been, was not quite so unsettling at all.

“Flowers in Midgar,” Genesis said cautiously. “Rare and hard work.”

Angeal had never minded hard work or their friendship would never have survived as long as it had. Has. Just because someone has passed on doesn't mean the connection was lost, even if he was the only one to maintain it.

“They come from the lifestream,” the girl said. “It flows below here. Can you feel that?”

Genesis could feel _something_ but what, he couldn't say. He had been around much mako in his life and he'd never had funny feelings about it before, assuming it was to that and not to this girl. Chalk it up to one more confusing interaction. “I believe so,” he said, tentatively. 

“I think all SOLDIERs probably feel it, even if they don't know what it is they're feeling.” The girl leaned forward, her hair falling haphazardly into her face. “Something about being tied to the lifestream itself, given it's now a part of them. Maybe Jenova drowns it out.”

_Jenova._

The entity from which his failed existence was carved into certainty. The dirty secret behind closed doors of Shinra's science department – one of many. The organism through which when Sephiroth had finally flipped what was left of his lid had facilitated his quest to take the world with him. 

( _“If this world seeks my destruction...It goes with me.”_ )

Even when he was going mad, the man couldn't be original if his life depended on it. Just was not by nature a particularly creative sort of person/person-alien hybrid. Shinra had no use for it, so it remained undeveloped despite his own repeated attempts to ram some culture in there. Points to him for the showmanship, a meteor was quite an effective measure and left their planet scarred even if it was still spinning. He had to admire the commitment.

“You've never heard her, have you?” The girl said. “I did find that kind of funny, the way it's different.”

“Likely the dilution,” Genesis hypothesized. It was something he had spent too many years thinking about and still had no concrete answer so it was as good an answer as any. “Or the genetic bleed.”

“Maybe,” she said, scrunching her nose up. “It's something I'd like to ask my father one day, if I can ever find him.”

“Where did you misplace him?” Genesis asked.

The girl smiled – smirked, really. Given his propensity for smirking, he was a leading authority on them. “The lifestream is noisy, people get absorbed into it and they can't be found again. Not easily.”

“My experience with it was not quite so straight-forward,” Genesis admitted.

“Only a couple of people can say that,” the girl said. “How does it feel to be special?”

_Special._

The lifetime wasted on the desire to be special, only to find out that when he was, he was both special and an utter failure. Even if he knew the degradation was gone, his hand ghosted towards his shoulder expecting to still be bleeding even now. There had been enough mako pumped into his system to keep him functional if not all together in his right mind to power a small city if someone were to hook him up to a generator.

Special. What good was special when all it did was cause pain and misery and loss? What was so special about that? People lost their hopes, their dreams and their lives every day and other than getting slapped back harder than Heidegger if he had a few too many around Scarlet, being special had only translated into feeling more lost than ever.

“I'm over it,” Genesis replied, warily.

All things considered, perhaps he ought to have gone into the family business. When there was a family business to go into and he hadn't killed his 'parents' and a factory full of wrong place, wrong time but possibly also Shinra aligned persons. So difficult to know where to draw the line between remorse and revenge these days.

“Would you do it differently?” the girl asked.

“No,” Genesis said, shocking her into looking at him. “I was a different person with different experiences, ideals, relationships. I had not truly known the spectre of my own demise for it had never truly occurred to me that I might not win a battle of any import in war or other missions. Would I have chosen differently as I am now? Knowing of the desperate and desolate landscape facing the planet, myself, my....friends, even the rag tag group of misfits who were left behind to serve as the hero I have purported myself to be for half of my life? I hope so. I hope there is something worthy enough remaining within me to still make some kind of difference. But I cannot do it differently, because I did not do it differently and would not have based on what I knew then. There is no point in dwelling on it.”

Shock faded to a barely masked amusement. “You really like the sound of your own voice, don't you?” 

“My parents – Shinra by proxy, I suppose – paid for my vocal coaching,” Genesis replied. “I have excellent projection, so I may as well use it.”

“Are you hiding a country accent under all that?” The girl asked.

“Of all the manner of horrors you could accuse me of and this is what you choose?” Genesis replied. 

“It's the one you give a shit about,” the girl replied bluntly.

And yes, perhaps he did. Even if he looked upon a stranger in his reflection, he could still _sound_ like himself, couldn't he?

“Well played,” Genesis told her. The exposure made his skin itch. “What would you do differently?”

Something in her posture slumped, sadness clinging to her aura like rain on leaves.

“I try something different every time,” she said. “But I'm starting to think everything is already so in motion by the time I can do anything about it until it's too late. That the taint is already too big.”

“Regret is a powerful burden to bear,” Genesis said. He had more than enough of it strewn along his life, more than enough for twenty if truth be told. “It helps you refrain from making the same mistake in the same way, if not all together.”

The girls smile grew, “I think you should remember that, but it's time for you to go now.”

“Go?” Genesis would go when he was good and ready, thank you very much. You can't go about being a non-existing person giving a somewhat existing person orders. It was rude.

“You can always come back,” the girl said. “But you'll have to take the long way to get here.”

It wasn't all that easy to get to in the first place, given the state of Midgar. Was she going to board the door or something of the like? Surely if she knew the reason he was here – and the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention said she did – then she knew it would be important to him to come back, just to see one of the few remnants of his friend. 

He was going to have to end up coming through the roof, wasn't he? Thank the Goddess he still had the ability to fly.

The light outside hard turned a blinding white as he found himself almost mindless walking through the doors to the Church. It made him wonder if any of it had happened at all, if it hadn't been some fever dream or apparition from the depths of his mind to attempt to make sense of the planet as it was now when he felt so horribly displaced. His eyes adjusted quickly, he was still enhanced after all, but he still stopped to take a deep breath in order to find which way the wind would sail him next.

Something was wrong. 

His senses were screaming at him that something was deeply wrong – the smell, the noise, everything suddenly felt as if it had gone just the wrong side of _different_.

It was the people, Genesis realised with a start. Midgar had a few scurrying around, those with nowhere to go and worse prospects than living in the ruins, but the noise suggested many, many more people. The faint tang in the air of mako, which he could have sworn was not nearly so distinct as when he had gone inside the church.

  
And then he saw it, so obvious that it was hidden in plain sight, once so innocuous that it hadn't registered that it shouldn't be there anymore. 

Above his head, Genesis could see the plate.

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank everyone over at my [tumblr](https://rainbowcarousels.tumblr.com/) who enabled me to post this thing based on my c/ping lines from it. Blame them.


End file.
